Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/209

Rh Jarreth received the Captain’s words in unprotesting silence. He seemed to be thinking very deeply, and of unhappy things, but when he spoke at last it was with a queer  twisted smile.

“I don’t believe I’ll go, Ned,” he answered, “no matter what comes to me here. I am certainly the biggest fool in the United States, and perhaps the biggest rascal; but after all I  am in the United States and I think I will stay  there. He has gone beyond anything I ever bargained for, that friend of mine; he has  made a monkey of me just the way you said,  and I am glad to know it at last. Yes, I guess I will stay. I would rather go to jail than to Germany.”

He pulled a roll of papers out of his pocket, turned them over once or twice and then tore them across.

“I always said it was criminal, the way you looked after your affairs, Ned Saulsby,” he  went on, “and I had got a clear title to most  of your land; these were the proofs.” He  tossed the torn papers into the nearest fire  where they burst into flame.

“I’d kind of like to go to jail,” he concluded at last, with a tremor in his once arrogant